Deathstalker 02 - Deathstalker Rebellion

would appear they have no air to work with. The inner doors are opening.
    Lights have come on beyond them. I'm now in the corridor outside the lock. No
    movement anywhere. Still no air, and the temperature's way below zero. You might as well come on over. There's no sign of any welcoming party."
    "Stay where you are," said Silence. "We'll be right with you."
    He worked the lock's outer doors again, and he and Cross passed through into the Champion, followed quickly by the security men. The corridor beyond the lock was brightly lit but uncomfortably narrow, and the low ceiling seemed to press down above their helmets. The walls were covered with cables and conduits and tightly packed instrumentation. The Empire's designers had been cramming in every extra improvement they could think of, right up to the last minute. None of it looked particularly dated. The Dauntless might be more efficiently arranged, but the systems were still pretty much the same. If a thing worked, the Empire tended to stick with it.
    "Interesting," said Frost, and Silence turned automatically to look at her, though all he could see was her featureless helmet. "According to my suit's sensors, the light and gravity are only a local phenomenon. The rest of the ship is still powered down. Which would seem to suggest someone knows we're here."
    "Could be the ship's computers," said Cross.
    "No," said Frost. "I don't think so. They would have turned all the life-support systems on."
    "Try general address on your comm," said Silence. "See if anyone answers."
    "This is Investigator Frost of the Dauntless, representing the Empire. Respond, please."
    They waited a long time, but there was no reply. The comm channel was empty of everything, even static. Silence's back crawled, feeling the pressure of unseen watching eyes. The words ghost ship came back to him, along with the half-serious stories that were always circulating during his cadet days. Tales
    of dead ships populated by dead crews, sailing silently through the long night on journeys that would never end. Skeletons on the bridge, or dead men rotting at their stations, heading for some far off destination the living could never understand. Silence had to smile. He hadn't realized those stupid stories had made such an impression on him.
    "Let's make for the bridge, people," he said briskly. "Maybe we'll find some answers there. Investigator, lead the way."
    Frost patched into a map of the Champion's structure, provided by the Dauntless's computer records, and set off down the corridor. Lights turned themselves on ahead of them and turned off behind them, so that they moved always in a pool of light surrounded by darkness. Weight remained constant at one gravity, but there was still no air or heat. Silence had the security men check out each room and compartment they passed, but though there were frequent signs of people's lives, there was no trace anywhere of the Champion's crew.
    There were unmade beds and abandoned meals, cards discarded in mid game and doors left ajar, as though the people involved had just stood up a hundred or so years ago, and walked away from their lives, never to return.
    Silence kept thinking he could see things moving on the edge of his vision, but every time he looked there was nothing there. Shadows moved disturbingly around the small party as they moved deeper into the ship, their hard suits eerily out of place in the crew's quarters. They all had the feeling they were being watched, even though the ship's security cameras clearly weren't working, and the security men spent as much time checking behind them as they did the way ahead. Frost, of course, just strode on through the empty corridors, calm and unmoved as always. Silence stuck close to her.

    They finally came to the main elevator. Silence plugged in a portable energy pack; they came back on line. There were walkways, but it would have meant a long climb to the bridge. Silence split the party into two groups, just in case, and they made their way up to the bridge in separate elevators. The cramped metal cages took an uncomfortably long time getting there, not least because they insisted on stopping at every floor in between, but eventually the elevator doors opened onto the bridge, and Silence led the way forward with something very like relief. If there were answers to be found anywhere on this ghost ship, he should be able to find them here.
    There was no one sitting in the command chair, skeleton or corpse,